


Save Point

by Solovei



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Long-Distance Friendship, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:55:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solovei/pseuds/Solovei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kenma reaches out to someone in a time of need.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Save Point

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themorninglark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/gifts).



There were three people saved in the contacts list of Kenma’s phone: His mother (for when she called him to ask if he could stop by the convenience store on the way home), Kuroo (for when he forgot when their practices were), and Hinata Shoyou. Aside from that, Kenma only used his phone to surf the web and play the occasional mobile game.

He was at school, watching as his teacher filled the board. Kenma felt like those should have been words, but he couldn’t understand any of them. There was a strange sort of itching in his fingers, and before he knew it, sharp claws had pierced his skin. Nobody seemed to notice this, why -- why didn’t anyone notice that something was wrong? Kema was running, great big leaps and bounds like an animal through the wreckage of a city. His whole body hurt, an ache settled deep into his bones, as if it was part of him, familiar, known. Except then -- there was Kuroo, standing squarely in his path, not moving, not anything, just standing there with that same carefree grin on his face. He was… saying something, and Kenma could feel himself crying. He wanted to say that he didn’t want any of this, that he didn’t mean for it to happen, but his mouth refused to make human sounds and -- blood, he tasted blood. 

Kenma woke up in a quiet panic, breathing fast. The air felt close, and there was a strange taste in his mouth. He kicked off his blanket, tried to orient himself in the here and now -- but that feeling, that screaming pain in his brain and body remained. He groped around, blindly, for his phone; the screen cast a cold glow in the darkness, but he felt marginally better. 

Kenma was not great with other people. It seemed there were a lot of rules and conditions that had to be met before you could do something like ask a person for help or confide in them about your feelings. In that sense, it was kind of like playing a video game. The problem was, as he so often realized, that the rules changed for different things and different people. Yaku had no problem fluttering around Kenma when he was sick, but rarely wanted to hang out outside of school or practice. On the other hand, Kuroo came over virtually all the time without being asked and had surprisingly good grasp on Kenma’s moods, but refused to help him with homework even though he was a year ahead and in a college-prep class. 

And then there was Hinata Shoyou. Kenma didn’t know where his boundaries lay, and the quick progression of their friendship only confused him further. Were they friendly rivals, or acquaintances? Although he was usually good at reading people, it was hard to do with Hinata.  
Taking a deep breath, Kenma’s fingers made their way across his phone’s keyboard.

>shoyou, are you awake?  
>ya!! cant sleep again, too excited 4 practice match 2morrow

Hinata’s message was so ordinary, so very Hinata-like, that Kenma took comfort in those jumbled letters. Keep talking, he thought, keep typing and maybe this will all go away… Maybe his heart will stop thundering in his chest, maybe he will be able to get some sleep after all…

>do you think you will win?  
>i hope so!!!!!!!!!!!!  
>wait y are u not sleeping!!!??? 

Kenma paused, fingers hovering just above the screen. No part of him wanted to admit that he wanted very badly to talk to someone right now. He knew it, but knowing and saying were very different things. 

The truth was that, if he was being honest with himself (and Kenma was only sometimes honest with himself), Hinata Shouyou was the first friend he had made since Kuroo forced himself into his life all those years ago. Sure, there was Yaku and Sou and Tora and the rest of the people on the team but they weren’t friends so much as… fixtures in his life. This… this was different.

>can we just stay up and talk for a bit? please?

Kenma frowned in the darkness and deleted that message.

>had some bad dreams i guess  
>o no!!! that sux im sorry :(( do u wanna talk abt it? 1 time i had a dream where kageyama ws tossing 2 me but i was invisible n it was rly scary!!!  
>that sounds so like you…  
>what??? im serious!! and then in my other dream daichi-san could breathe fire and i was running away but thn i looked and my shirt was inside out???

In spite of himself, he felt his mouth twitch up into a small smile.

>you certainly have a good imagination, shoyou.  
>rly?? cuz i always to rly bad on composition projects!! tsukki says my spling is rly bad.  
>well, at least your dreams sound interesting. um, shoyou, thank you for staying up and talking to me… i feel better now. i was… really scared, before.

That was odd, Kenma thought as he saw what he had just typed. He wasn’t usually this forthcoming with his feelings. But it was too late to take it back; his words had travelled out through the airwaves, far far away to make their way to their recipient. A twinge of worry settled in his gut when four, five, ten minutes passed without Hinata’s reply. Then, finally, a buzz.

>no prob!! so excited for tokyo!!!!!!!

As he turned off his phone, plunging the room into darkness once again, Kenma let out a contented sigh. Maybe he wasn’t so bad at this, after all.  
  
  
Taketora burst into the gymnasium sometime around noon on the first day of training camp. “Hey, the Karasuno bus is here! Let’s go meet them!” There was a steadily building wave of excitement, which Kenma was content to pass over until Kuroo took the hem of his shirt and lead him along. “Hey, are you coming?” He said on his way out of the gym.

“... No, I’ll stay here I think.” He should have been excited at seeing his friend, but his stomach was twisted into knots. Hinata hasn’t texted him at all since that night. Had he overstepped some kind of line? Freaked him out? Ended their friendship before it even really began?  
After about 15 minutes passed, he heard voices returning - Kuroo’s, Tora’s, and more besides. The Karasuno Volleyball Club filed into the gym, all smiles and laughter. He scanned the faces - there was a girl with blonde hair whom he didn’t recognize, their 3rd-year setter and captain, but… no sight of Hinata Shoyou.  
Kenma felt like part of him had fallen away into a deep abyss. Yes, he has done it. He had done something incredibly rude in reaching out to him like that in a moment of need. He had driven away the only person he had made friends with since he was in elementary school.  
“Is… is Shoyou not coming?” He asked quietly, addressing no one in particular.  
“He and Kageyama had to do make-up classes since they failed their exams… they’ll be coming later, apparently.” Taketora explained, slapping Kenma’s shoulder playfully.

Kenma let out a monosyllabic hum of acknowledgement, but he still wasn’t convinced. Even if what Tora said was true, that didn’t mean Shoyou would still want to be his friend after what happened. Faced with the terrifying possibility of spending the entire training camp watching his friendship fall apart, he went through the rest of their practices in a daze. He ran mostly on auto-pilot, silently reminding himself not to ask anyone for help ever again. Nothing good came out of it, this was clear enough.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, really. Logically, it must have still been the same day. He watched Lev and Yaku bicker about something, sitting apart from everyone as he always did, observing. He had figured out long ago that most people did not find relating to others as difficult as he did, so it was interesting to see how they went about their lives without having to pause and consider every interaction. Kuroo wandered by and offered him some water, but didn’t say anything. Well, regardless of what happened, Kuroo would at least remain his friend, Kenma thought.

That is, at least, until he heard the gym doors bang open to reveal a very out-of-breath Hinata and Kageyama. He smiled, slightly, despite himself. Even if it was over, he would still get to see Shoyou play... and maybe that was enough. 

Their coach had called a time-out amid the flurry of excitement the new arrival caused. The redhead had scarcely changed his shoes before being greeted by both teams, and this time it seemed Kenma had no choice but be swept up in the greetings. “Kenma!” Hinata called out when he spotted him. Grasping his hands, the pint-sized middle blocker started chattering away at a mile a minute “I’m so glad to see you again! How are you? Are you okay? I was worried about you when you said you had nightmares, can I do anything? When my sister has bad dreams I give her a plushie, maybe you should get one of those too!”  
Kenma blinked. “So… you… you’re not... mad?”  
“What? No… What are friends for, right?” He replied with a wide grin.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first time writing Kenma! I hope I got him right :) Also, Karasuno boys texting headcanons continue! Hinata is one step away from being an early 2000's teenager chatting on MSN for the first time, but he probably also really overuses emoji. Kenma at least writes in complete sentences, but he can't be bothered with things like capitals.


End file.
